Seitan Gave Me a Taco

About a month ago, we had some friends over to cook down, Mexican style. Our friends Ryan and Val brought Upton’s Naturals Chorizo-style Seitan. These guys (Upton’s) are friends of friends from back in our Chicago days and totally do it right–it’s basically just a bigger, more professional version of the way you make seitan in your own kitchen, but with more mustaches.

I know what you’re thinking–after that Daiya post, we’ve totally sold out and aren’t preparing any of our own food any more. Au contraire, mes freres! Upton’s was so delicious, yet so simple, that it give me an idea: why not make our own ground seitan? On a variety of occasions, we’ve chopped up seitan fairly finely to use in tacos, but never quite made that leap into grinding it properly in a food processor. This genius notion probably isn’t new to you. But after making a batch last night, we were totally blown away. Our homemade batch was the best we’ve had!

And it’s really easy. We started with the PPK’s classic seitan recipe (this is our goto “beef” style seitan), unmodified. I think I over-kneaded the dough a bit, which made the final seitan just a tad rubbery. This worked out perfectly for our ground seitan though. If you ever find yourself with rubbery seitan, this is a great way to use it.

Later, back at the lab…Cut one of the large seitan pieces into processable chunks, toss them in the food processor, and grind them coarsely (you’re going to grind more later, so go easy). Then make a batch of our taco seasoning (cut the salt down to 1/4 tsp–seitan is much saltier than tempeh!). Add about half of the seasoning to the seitan, along with 1/4 cup of soy sauce and 1/2 cup of the seitan stock, and grind briefly, until well mixed. Add the rest of the seasoning and mix until you’ve got the desired size. If your seitan was a bit rubbery, go a little finer. Otherwise, this is totally a matter of personal preference.

At this point, it’s ready to be cooked or stored. If you made a big batch (if you used your entire batch of seitan, say), you could probably even freeze this to no ill effect. We’ve had seitan brats in the freezer for a year that are still awesome.